Further development of the Common Rail system

Overview

The objective for this activity is to complete the installation of the Common Rail system on the five engines aboard the Swedish icebreaker YMER and to develop software for regulation of the interaction between all five engines; finally, a full scale test trail will be performed.

The Common Rail is Fuel injection system configured as a speed governor with fixed speed. Variable speed is an option and can provide further fuel savings. Load control is realized independent on the generator side based on excitation control for 10 load points. On the electric side the engine output can be measured and controlled easily, on the engine side only the speed has to be kept constant. With this concept even overload situations can be avoided. Due to the very flexible parametrization and the high accuracy for the injection process the combustion can be kept within optimal conditions for any load point with positive effects on fuel consumption and emissions.

In order to assess if it is possible to make the icebreaker’s engines cleaner and more economic, a pilot project was performed in the previous WINMOS (I), were a common rail system was developed and fitted aboard the Swedish icebreaker YMER. The pilot phase for the first engine is completed; the next step, part of this activity, is to the install the system on the remaining four engines aboard the icebreaker YMER; the software for regulation of the interaction between all five engines will be developed and a full scale test trail will be performed as well. During the pilot project simple tests with variable engine speed were performed, resulting in a potential for fuel savings of around 5%. In addition, the test trail showed good results on emissions reduction: black smoke reduced by 80%, unchanged NOx and fuel savings of more than 7%.

Sub-Activity 3.1 – Tender preparation and selection of a manufacturer

The scope of this sub-activity was to write the specifications and identify the manufacturer of the system, based on a tendering process. Selecting a new manufacturer was necessary because the specifications have changed due to problems in adapting the new technology to an existing old engine in WINMOS (I) and therefore new procurement documents were needed. The manufacturer selected was Heinzmann GmbH & Co. KG.

Sub-Activity 3.2 – Manufacturing and installation of the system

The scope of this sub-activity was to develop and manufacture the system according to specifications made in sub-activity 3.1 for the remaining 4 engines. The pilot phase in WINMOS (I) encountered difficulties and a lot of adjustments needed to be made. The system still needed some minor modifications before it could fully utilise the potential improvements for the remaining engines. The installation of the system aboard have been completed and first test runs have been done.

Sub-Activity 3.3 –Validation of the system

The scope of this sub-activity is to verify the functionality and safety of the system. Also verification of improved performance concerning emissions and operation economy will be performed.